Variety confirms that commercials director Matthijs Van Heijningen has been hired by Universal to helm a prequel to John Carpenter's The Thing.

The story is set at the icy Norwegian camp where the shape-shifting "thing" from another world is discovered, revived and set loose on the men. These are, of course, the events that went down before Carpenter's '82 take on John Campbell Jr's. "Who Goes There?" Battlestar Galactica's Ron Moore is still on board to script. He was attached some time ago.